Re: [wheezy] Icon Editor For KDE ?
On Tuesday 16 June 2015 21:49:12 Alex DEKKER wrote: On 16/06/15 19:03, Lisandro Damián Nicanor Pérez Meyer wrote: On Sunday 14 June 2015 11:43:37 Alex DEKKER wrote: Looking through /usr/share/kde4/apps/*/icons it seems that, er, perhaps PNG is the dominant icon format after all. Obviously the number of PNG files on disk is more than SVG because there are renderings for each size: Actually no, those are built from SVGs. The idea here is to speed up the drawing process (If I am guessing properly). It would certainly make sense to me to ship vector icons in the package and render them to a raster format at install or first-run time, but every icon in /usr/share/kde4/apps/ is owned by a package according to dpkg -S so I think they're just distributed as PNG. Just generate them at build time. -- ¿Qué vamos a hacer esta noche Cerebro? -Lo mismo que todas las noches Pinky... ¡¡¡tratar de conquistar el mundo!!! Pinky y Cerebro. Narf. Lisandro Damián Nicanor Pérez Meyer http://perezmeyer.com.ar/ http://perezmeyer.blogspot.com/ signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [wheezy] Icon Editor For KDE ?
On Sunday 14 June 2015 11:43:37 Alex DEKKER wrote: On 14/06/15 03:53, Nick Boyce wrote: On Saturday 13 Jun 2015 21:32:36 Alex DEKKER wrote: Inkscape? AIUI, KDE icons are SVG [and have been for some time] so a vector editor would be the order of the day. Wow ... thanks, I had no idea. That change has completely passed me by. Allow me to row back somewhat: $ locate kde4/apps | grep icons | grep svg | wc -l 134 $ locate kde4/apps | grep icons | grep png | wc -l 1090 Looking through /usr/share/kde4/apps/*/icons it seems that, er, perhaps PNG is the dominant icon format after all. Obviously the number of PNG files on disk is more than SVG because there are renderings for each size: Actually no, those are built from SVGs. The idea here is to speed up the drawing process (If I am guessing properly). -- My favourite poem is the one that starts 'Thirty days hath September' because it actually tells you something. -- Groucho Marx Lisandro Damián Nicanor Pérez Meyer http://perezmeyer.com.ar/ http://perezmeyer.blogspot.com/ signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [wheezy] Icon Editor For KDE ?
On 16/06/15 19:03, Lisandro Damián Nicanor Pérez Meyer wrote: On Sunday 14 June 2015 11:43:37 Alex DEKKER wrote: Looking through /usr/share/kde4/apps/*/icons it seems that, er, perhaps PNG is the dominant icon format after all. Obviously the number of PNG files on disk is more than SVG because there are renderings for each size: Actually no, those are built from SVGs. The idea here is to speed up the drawing process (If I am guessing properly). It would certainly make sense to me to ship vector icons in the package and render them to a raster format at install or first-run time, but every icon in /usr/share/kde4/apps/ is owned by a package according to dpkg -S so I think they're just distributed as PNG. alexd -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-kde-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/55808bc8.2010...@ale.cx
Re: [wheezy] Icon Editor For KDE ?
On Sunday 14 Jun 2015 11:43:37 Alex DEKKER wrote: Allow me to row back somewhat: $ locate kde4/apps | grep icons | grep svg | wc -l 134 $ locate kde4/apps | grep icons | grep png | wc -l 1090 Looking through /usr/share/kde4/apps/*/icons it seems that, er, perhaps PNG is the dominant icon format after all. Ah - good research. I wonder whether this may have anything to do with the lack of a special-purpose SVG-oriented icon editor. At one SVG icon-set page I found : http://svgicons.sourceforge.net/ the author comments All icons in BlueSphere theme are designed using SVG format. I have used Sodipodi vector-drawing program, and partially hand-crafted (!) SVG (XML) files using KWrite - (my exclamation marks). An interesting article here: http://www.svgopen.org/2008/papers/104-SVG_in_KDE/ contains the disturbing remark: The loss of quality in vector graphics at small size is a severe problem. Rendering vector graphics primitives at low resolutions introduces a certain amount of blur into the output. This is mainly caused by horizontal and vertical primitives which happen to fall between pixel boundaries, which in turn makes the anti-aliasing algorithms try to cope with it by rasterizing two, instead of one rows/columns but at a lower color intensity. For primitives which are rendered at small sizes the goals of resolution independence and preserving their good looks across resolutions diverges a lot. We have the former, we need the latter. which makes me think the use of SVG in this context is a little embryonic. [As an aside, I'm faintly horrified to find this standard 128px x 128px SVG icon http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oxygen480-status-dialog-information.svg occupies a file size of 120Kb ! looking at the source recalls the old joke XML is like violence - if it doesn't work, use more] Not that bitmap-style icon technology seems any better provisioned with dedicated utilities. I note that the standard Gnome bitmap icon editor utility also seems dead in the water: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1161899 http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/icon-editor-for- ubuntu-4175490127/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/iconedit/ As of 2015-02-16, this project is no longer under active development It's *weird* . back in the days of [gulp] Windows 3.1, it seemed that almost everyone tried their hand at writing an icon-editor utility, and there were many freeware and shareware tools (of varying quality) available. On those cover diskettes that came with magazines there was almost always an icon editor or two . I wonder what changed people's minds. On the upside, this means I can add yet another basic missing platform tool to my list of KDE applications to work upon when I've achieved basic competency. Cheers Nick -- If Linux was a car, there'd be 18 steering wheels and no air conditioning, but you'd be able to change the radio station from the hubcaps. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-kde-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/201506151659.38660.n...@glimmer.demon.co.uk
RE: [wheezy] Icon Editor For KDE ?
On Sunday 14 Jun 2015 11:43:37 Alex DEKKER wrote: Allow me to row back somewhat: $ locate kde4/apps | grep icons | grep svg | wc -l 134 $ locate kde4/apps | grep icons | grep png | wc -l 1090 Looking through /usr/share/kde4/apps/*/icons it seems that, er, perhaps PNG is the dominant icon format after all. Ah - good research, suggesting the revolution is perhaps still more of a wishlist item. I wonder whether this may have anything to do with the lack of a special-purpose SVG-oriented icon editor. At one SVG icon-set page I found : http://svgicons.sourceforge.net/ the author comments All icons in BlueSphere theme are designed using SVG format. I have used Sodipodi vector-drawing program, and partially hand-crafted (!) SVG (XML) files using KWrite - (my exclamation marks). An interesting article here: http://www.svgopen.org/2008/papers/104-SVG_in_KDE/ contains the disturbing remark: The loss of quality in vector graphics at small size is a severe problem. Rendering vector graphics primitives at low resolutions introduces a certain amount of blur into the output. This is mainly caused by horizontal and vertical primitives which happen to fall between pixel boundaries, which in turn makes the anti-aliasing algorithms try to cope with it by rasterizing two, instead of one rows/columns but at a lower color intensity. For primitives which are rendered at small sizes the goals of resolution independence and preserving their good looks across resolutions diverges a lot. We have the former, we need the latter. which makes me think the use of SVG in this context is a little embryonic or premature. [As an aside, I'm faintly horrified to find this standard 128px x 128px SVG icon http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oxygen480-status-dialog-information.svg occupies a file size of 120Kb ! looking at the source recalls the old joke XML is like violence - if it doesn't work, use more] Not that bitmap-style icon technology seems any better provisioned with dedicated utilities. I note that the standard Gnome bitmap icon editor utility also seems dead in the water: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1161899 http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/icon-editor-for- ubuntu-4175490127/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/iconedit/ As of 2015-02-16, this project is no longer under active development It's weird . back in the days of [gulp] Windows 3.1, it seemed that almost everyone tried their hand at writing an icon-editor utility, and there were many freeware and shareware tools (of varying quality) available. On those cover diskettes that came with magazines there was almost always an icon editor or two . I wonder what changed people's minds. On the upside, this means I can add yet another basic missing platform tool to my list of KDE applications to work upon when I've achieved basic competency :) Cheers Nick -- If Linux was a car, there'd be 18 steering wheels and no air conditioning, but you'd be able to change the radio station from the hubcaps. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-kde-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/ff8270991bb08b49bc6295afd1e0e44ab80...@exmbx13.thus.corp
Re: [wheezy] Icon Editor For KDE ?
On 15/06/15 12:15 PM, Nick Boyce wrote: On Sunday 14 Jun 2015 11:43:37 Alex DEKKER wrote: Allow me to row back somewhat: $ locate kde4/apps | grep icons | grep svg | wc -l 134 $ locate kde4/apps | grep icons | grep png | wc -l 1090 Looking through /usr/share/kde4/apps/*/icons it seems that, er, perhaps PNG is the dominant icon format after all. Ah - good research, suggesting the revolution is perhaps still more of a wishlist item. I wonder whether this may have anything to do with the lack of a special-purpose SVG-oriented icon editor. At one SVG icon-set page I found : http://svgicons.sourceforge.net/ the author comments All icons in BlueSphere theme are designed using SVG format. I have used Sodipodi vector-drawing program, and partially hand-crafted (!) SVG (XML) files using KWrite - (my exclamation marks). An interesting article here: http://www.svgopen.org/2008/papers/104-SVG_in_KDE/ contains the disturbing remark: The loss of quality in vector graphics at small size is a severe problem. Rendering vector graphics primitives at low resolutions introduces a certain amount of blur into the output. This is mainly caused by horizontal and vertical primitives which happen to fall between pixel boundaries, which in turn makes the anti-aliasing algorithms try to cope with it by rasterizing two, instead of one rows/columns but at a lower color intensity. For primitives which are rendered at small sizes the goals of resolution independence and preserving their good looks across resolutions diverges a lot. We have the former, we need the latter. which makes me think the use of SVG in this context is a little embryonic or premature. [As an aside, I'm faintly horrified to find this standard 128px x 128px SVG icon http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oxygen480-status-dialog-information.svg occupies a file size of 120Kb ! looking at the source recalls the old joke XML is like violence - if it doesn't work, use more] Not that bitmap-style icon technology seems any better provisioned with dedicated utilities. I note that the standard Gnome bitmap icon editor utility also seems dead in the water: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1161899 http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/icon-editor-for- ubuntu-4175490127/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/iconedit/ As of 2015-02-16, this project is no longer under active development It's weird . back in the days of [gulp] Windows 3.1, it seemed that almost everyone tried their hand at writing an icon-editor utility, and there were many freeware and shareware tools (of varying quality) available. On those cover diskettes that came with magazines there was almost always an icon editor or two . I wonder what changed people's minds. On the upside, this means I can add yet another basic missing platform tool to my list of KDE applications to work upon when I've achieved basic competency :) Cheers Nick You will note that the problem with .png icons is you need a lot of them. You have to create a different icon file for each size you want. Bitmaps don't scale well up or down so at different resolutions you need different icons. Vector graphics scale upward nicely but don't do so well at low resolutions. With 1920x1080 being the standard screen size lately, I suggest that low resolution is not a problem. Even smartphones have HD screens so SVG icons work even across platforms. The one exception to this is the favicon.ico file, where bitmaps are required. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-kde-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/557f2b3a.1000...@torfree.net
Re: [wheezy] Icon Editor For KDE ?
On 15/06/15 17:15, Nick Boyce wrote: I wonder whether this may have anything to do with the lack of a special-purpose SVG-oriented icon editor. Inkscape is probably the best Free vector drawing programme going, and it has an icon preview mode... At one SVG icon-set page I found : http://svgicons.sourceforge.net/ the author comments All icons in BlueSphere theme are designed using SVG format. I have used Sodipodi vector-drawing program, ...and Sodipodi is the ancestor of Inkscape, as it were. and partially hand-crafted (!) SVG (XML) files using KWrite - (my exclamation marks). All part of the beauty of the format! Nobody goes to the trouble of hand-crafting JPEGs, but text-based files allow you do to that. [As an aside, I'm faintly horrified to find this standard 128px x 128px SVG icon http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oxygen480-status-dialog-information.svg occupies a file size of 120Kb ! looking at the source recalls the old joke XML is like violence - if it doesn't work, use more] There's a bit of fat in the XML that could be removed, methinks, and it gzips down to 16kB [the KDE icons, when they're SVG, seem to be shipped as .sgvz]. Furthermore, I ran it through Scour [http://codedread.com/scour/] and got it down to 17kB. Gzipping /that/ got me a file of 4344 bytes! I wonder what changed people's minds. The kids don't use desktops any more, it's all about phones and tablets. alexd -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-kde-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/557f3c8c.3090...@ale.cx
Re: [wheezy] Icon Editor For KDE ?
On 14/06/15 03:53, Nick Boyce wrote: On Saturday 13 Jun 2015 21:32:36 Alex DEKKER wrote: Inkscape? AIUI, KDE icons are SVG [and have been for some time] so a vector editor would be the order of the day. Wow ... thanks, I had no idea. That change has completely passed me by. Allow me to row back somewhat: $ locate kde4/apps | grep icons | grep svg | wc -l 134 $ locate kde4/apps | grep icons | grep png | wc -l 1090 Looking through /usr/share/kde4/apps/*/icons it seems that, er, perhaps PNG is the dominant icon format after all. Obviously the number of PNG files on disk is more than SVG because there are renderings for each size: konqueror/icons/oxygen/48x48/actions/google.png konqueror/icons/oxygen/64x64/actions/google.png konqueror/icons/oxygen/32x32/actions/google.png konqueror/icons/oxygen/22x22/actions/google.png konqueror/icons/oxygen/16x16/actions/google.png but eg from akonadi/ braindump/ and calligra/, there is precisely one SVG icon. So it seems things are bit more nuanced than I had thought. I guess this is all in aid of a more luscious pixel-sharp desktop so it must be a good thing :) Yes, in a time where there is more diversity of screen resolutions than before, vector graphics make more sense. Besides Inkscape (which I last used an aeon ago on Windows), do you believe I could use Karbon (a vector drawing application ... support for ODG, SVG, PNG, PDF, WMF) ? That would surely be the KDE way I'll try it. Haven't done any of this for years. Just had a play with Karbon and Inkscape. Karbon is more basic than Inkscape, in particular the View Icon Preview feature is relevant here. alexd -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-kde-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/557d5ad9.90...@ale.cx
Re: [wheezy] Icon Editor For KDE ?
On Saturday 13 Jun 2015 21:32:36 Alex DEKKER wrote: On 13/06/15 19:04, Nick Boyce wrote: All this leaves me wondering what tool KDE developers on Debian use to create their packages' icons can anyone give me a clue ? Inkscape? AIUI, KDE icons are SVG [and have been for some time] so a vector editor would be the order of the day. Wow ... thanks, I had no idea. That change has completely passed me by. I've just been googling for anything I can find on the subject, and I can't say I've found much. The techbase.kde.org page talks mostly about PNG files and barely mentions SVGs: https://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorial/Icons and the same is true at: http://doc.qt.io/qt-4.8/qt-widgets-icons-example.html but I see that http://doc.qt.io/qt-4.8/qicon.html has the comment: The QIcon class provides scalable icons in different modes and states Since Qt 4.2, an icon engine that supports SVG is included I guess this is all in aid of a more luscious pixel-sharp desktop so it must be a good thing :) Besides Inkscape (which I last used an aeon ago on Windows), do you believe I could use Karbon (a vector drawing application ... support for ODG, SVG, PNG, PDF, WMF) ? That would surely be the KDE way I'll try it. I'd welcome a pointer to KDE requirements for a suitable SVG . I see here: http://en.flossmanuals.net/inkscape/ch055_creating-icons/ that a recommendation for Inkscape is Icon 32 x 32, but I imagine there's more to it than that. Style guidelines ? Colour depth ? If there are no such docs then I'll find some SVG icon files and try to figure it out. Cheers (and thanks for the clue), Nick -- A week in the lab saves an hour in the library -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-kde-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/201506140353.26402.n...@glimmer.demon.co.uk
Re: [wheezy] Icon Editor For KDE ?
On Saturday 13 June 2015 21:32:36 Alex DEKKER wrote: [snip] Inkscape? AIUI, KDE icons are SVG [and have been for some time] so a vector editor would be the order of the day. Right, icons should now be created form SVGs (or at least preferably). You might consider grabbing one and use it as a template. -- Lisandro Damián Nicanor Pérez Meyer http://perezmeyer.com.ar/ http://perezmeyer.blogspot.com/ signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
[wheezy] Icon Editor For KDE ?
As part of learning KDE-programming I want to try creating a custom icon for a home-grown app - but have immediately hit a problem: there seems to be just one icon editor utility for KDE, called KIconEdit, but there is no kiconedit package in current versions of Debian. The last version of Debian that had a package was lenny, which had a version 3.5.9: http://archive.debian.net/lenny/kiconedit which suggests that there may never have existed a KDE4 kiconedit package for Debian. There was an RFP for kiconedit 4.3.3 in 2009: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=561495 but it looks as though that never got anywhere - and anyway, the RFP bug includes these comments: I started to package this program but the package is not finished yet This program at the moment is dead upstream ... [the program] has some bugs, for instance the copy/paste functionality is broken and has also other small issues There is only one bug report at bugs.kde.org for kiconedit - a wishlist bug about removing Qt 3 dependencies, which has apparently never been completed: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=264698 and there is no mention at kde.org of the package being dead: https://www.kde.org/applications/graphics/kiconedit/ There's an Ubuntu package of version 4.4.0: http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/kiconedit (I wonder what their source was for it). [Obviously there is an opportunity for me here to be useful and work on kiconedit, but until such time as I'm actually competent enough, what to do ...] All this leaves me wondering what tool KDE developers on Debian use to create their packages' icons can anyone give me a clue ? Googling reveals various hacks such as creating .PNG files using a standard paint program, and then converting them to .ICO format using some other tool - but as someone else commented in a thread about the issue, that doesn't provide the classic UI of an icon editor (with both a zoomed-in and zoomed- out representation to look at while you work). So what does everyone else use for this task ? All pointers welcome. Cheers Nick -- I can't watch TV longer than five minutes without praying for nuclear holocaust ~~ Bill Hicks -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-kde-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/201506131904.42481.n...@glimmer.demon.co.uk
Re: [wheezy] Icon Editor For KDE ?
On 13/06/15 19:04, Nick Boyce wrote: All this leaves me wondering what tool KDE developers on Debian use to create their packages' icons can anyone give me a clue ? Inkscape? AIUI, KDE icons are SVG [and have been for some time] so a vector editor would be the order of the day. alexd -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-kde-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/557c9364.6060...@ale.cx
